Autumn leaves...and nostalgia

Even as a young girl I was wistful about the fall. Fall was glorious in the Seattle area. The thousands of Cottonwoods would turn a bright goldernrod yellow, and, when their leaves fell, they turned the ground around my house into a sunshine-y carpet, slick with rain.

When I was ten years old I wrote a song about autumn leaves. I'm embarrassed about this now, but also weirdly proud. As I wrote this song I pictured myself having it recorded, and becoming famous. Uh….it wasn't that good. Really. Not at all. But as I look back on it I am more struck by the sense of wistfulness that I had, even at such a young age, about the passage of time:

Autumn leaves, sometimes look like fairies,
Dancing in the wind,
Autumn leaves, sometimes look like fairies,
Calling this to me:

Autumn is here, autumn is here
Come and play with me today….

When I wrote this song I was also very lonely. Until I started junior high I didn't have a lot of close friends at Arrowhead Elementary School. The kids swore a lot, and talked about "making out" with their boyfriends. The school was intimidating. I was a social kid, but I preferred reading in the library to all other activities.

Part of what is so fleeting about the fall is the fleeting beauty of the leaves themselves. Pictures don't adequately capture it. I think it's because the beauty is light itself. After doing some research on the subject I learned that the colors in the fall leaves are "in" the leaves all the time, but when the trees stop making chlorophyll, which makes the leaves green, the leaves' "true" colors emerge.

On October 2nd I started taking pictures of a very pretty cluster of trees on the edge of CMU's campus after I dropped my daughter off at her daycare. There was a long gap between the 5th and the 6th picture, but otherwise I took these pictures every 4 or 5 days. I especially like the 5th picture---with all the sunshine lighting up the beautiful leaves!